EXCLUSIVE Q&A: Amazon intensifies anti-fraud measures as holidays near
Amazon is actively working to prevent consumer scams from occurring on its site.
Chain Store Age recently spoke with Scott Knapp, VP of worldwide buyer risk prevention at Amazon, to discuss how the e-tail giant is staying ahead of the latest online holiday scams and working with a variety of solutions and partners to keep its customers protected.
How do scammers impersonate legitimate businesses and how is Amazon responding?
Impersonation scams happen when a bad actor pretends to be a trusted contact to try to get access to sensitive information like Social Security numbers, bank information, or Amazon account details.
Scammers use convincing tactics to reel consumers in, such as similar logos, website addresses, and other information to mimic whoever they are pretending to be; and they move quickly by changing tactics to avoid detection.
Between Black Friday and Christmas Day 2023, the most commonly reported impersonation scam by Amazon customers involved fake order or shipping confirmations claiming that payment was required in the U.S.
There was nearly a 1.5x increase in reports of this scam from three weeks prior. Another common impersonation scam during this time period referred to fake purchases about a name brand tech product, in which Amazon received roughly a 13x increase in customer reports from three weeks earlier.
In September 2024, customer reports showed that scammers are continuing to contact consumers about orders that don’t exist, and increasingly using text messages as their contact method.
We are working to help educate consumers to avoid scams, ensure customers know it’s us by implementing technology, and hold scammers accountable. That is why we are initiating a takedown of scammers with public-private partnerships to hold bad actors accountable.
Last year, Amazon initiated takedowns of more than 40,000 phishing websites and 10,000 phone numbers being used as part of impersonation schemes. We partner with law enforcement across the globe to ensure scammers are held accountable, including having referred hundreds of bad actors to authorities.
What are the latest developments in Amazon's anti-counterfeiting strategy?
Amazon has a zero-tolerance policy for counterfeit products. We have proactive measures in place to prevent counterfeit products from being listed, and from the moment a seller lists a product for sale, our advanced technology continually scans for potential counterfeit, fraud, and abuse, including future changes submitted for the product.
Since its launch in 2020, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) has pursued more than 21,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement.
In 2023, Amazon identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of more than seven million counterfeit products worldwide, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the retail supply chain.
[READ MORE: Amazon spends more than $1.2 billion to stop fraud]
This includes counterfeits that were attempted to be sent into our fulfillment network and situations where we worked with brands and law enforcement to find counterfeiters’ warehouses and facilities and get them shut down.
What measures is Amazon taking to block fake reviews?
We have robust and long-standing policies that prohibit review abuse, and we suspend, ban, and take legal action against those who violate these policies.
Amazon invests significant resources to proactively stop fake reviews. This includes machine learning models that analyze thousands of data points to detect risk, including relations to other accounts, sign-in activity, review history, and other indications of unusual behavior, and expert investigators that use sophisticated fraud-detection tools to analyze and prevent fake reviews from ever appearing in our store.
As a result of continued investments, Amazon proactively blocked more than 250 million suspected fake reviews from our store last year. In addition to our proactive technology that protects our store, another effective way to take down fake review brokers is legal action.
We have teams dedicated to uncovering and investigating fake review brokers. In 2023, Amazon took legal action against more than 150 bad actors attempting to engage in reviews abuse across the U.S., China, and Europe.
What does Amazon see as the biggest e-commerce security threats for 2025?
Scams and security are among the biggest e-commerce threats and are an industry-wide issue. Online scams accounted for more than $1.02 trillion lost in 2023 according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance’s Global State of Scams Report.
We know bad actors will continue evolving their tactics to avoid detection. That is why Amazon is consistently working to combat all forms of fraud. We leverage strategies to keep customers safe that include building innovative technologies that shield accounts and detect fraudulent attempts, creating educational initiatives to help consumers know which communications are authentic, and fostering partnerships with law enforcement to hold bad actors accountable.
While there is still work to do in driving the right public and private sector partnerships for customer protection, Amazon is excited about what we can do to together to help hold bad actors accountable and work to stop scams at the source.
